In the quest for increased operating efficiencies and the like in the production of discrete segments of glass fiber strands or "chopped strand", a number of advancements have been made. A more recent advancement includes concommitantly drawing continuous glass fibers from a plurality of spaced-apart feeders adapted to supply a plurality of strands to a chopper wherein the cot wheel of the chopper acts as a pull wheel to attenuate the streams of molten material issuing from the feeders into filaments. As set forth in U.S. Pat. No. 4,194,896, issued on Mar. 25, 1980, the apparatus is arranged to permit continuous operation of the system in spite of a disruption in one or more of the feeders. To facilitate the restart of such disrupted positions, the primary attenuation means or chopper of the aforementioned patent was reduced in speed for a brief period of time.
During that period of reduced speed, the chopped strand product that was produced from all the feeders was unacceptable and, therefore, dealt with as scrap.
The present invention provides a system wherein the strands from the disrupted feeders may be rethreaded or restarted through the chopper in the absence of reducing the speed of the chopper from the normal production speed. Thus, the amount of scrap is reduced, and the amount of good product is increased.